SaaStr

FEBRUARY 9, 2024

Everything from hiring on the GTM side to layering in a sales-led motion into PLG. Let’s dive into what’s making that hybrid model successful: PLG and Sales Led? Given this, you must understand the role that each facet of the business plays in promoting that product, from marketing and sales to customer service.

Scale 275

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Marketing 275

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 25, 2020

379: From how many reps to hire, to compensation models, here are the top 10 mistakes founders make when hiring their first sales teams and how to avoid them. Announcer: In today’s SaaStr Insider, SaaStr CEO and founder, Jason Lemkin, shared the top 10 mistakes founders make when hiring their first sales team.

Sales Hiring 190

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 190

TechEmpower SaaS

MARCH 4, 2024

Key Functions with High Impact Generative AI is revolutionizing sales by enabling dynamic pricing and personalized customer interactions, boosting conversion rates and customer satisfaction. Post-sale, AI analyzes customer data to improve service and loyalty, making it a cornerstone of modern sales methodologies.

Generative AI 443

Generative AI AI CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 443

Sales Hacker

MAY 20, 2020

One way for companies to avoid layoffs is to hire from within and look for individuals they can take from non-revenue-generating roles and move them into revenue-generating roles like Sales. . This keeps your high performers on staff while focusing resources on what will help you survive a tough economy, namely a stronger sales force.

Sales Hiring 108

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Sales Enablement 108

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 26, 2023

The biggest structural difference is you have to hire all the VPs by employee 50–100. You won’t be able to scale this far without a full management team — VPs of Sales, Marketing, Product, Engineering, Customer Success at least. I almost always see sales quickly fall in that case. You backfill the great ones.

Sales Hiring 280

Sales Hiring Startup Scale Scaling 280

Neil Patel

OCTOBER 25, 2020

But should you build your own in-house marketing team or hire an agency partner? When you hire an agency, you are not just hiring one person. You are hiring a whole team and their network, which can sometimes be ten or more people. You won’t have to build out a management structure for that department either.

Sales Hiring 145

Sales Hiring Outsourcing Services Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting 145

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2024

Lemkin expresses concern about the changing work ethic and loyalty of sales and marketing professionals, observing a trend of multiple job-holding and lack of commitment. Lemkin acknowledges the challenge of meeting people’s high expectations and the existential nature of finding solutions to these hiring and motivation issues.

Sales Hiring 198

Sales Hiring Outsourcing Services Technical Review Scale 198

Sales Hacker

JUNE 7, 2022

Jump on LinkedIn or any social channel and you will no doubt see the following when it comes to hiring: It’s tough to source and engage the ‘right’ candidates in this talent market. It’s more competitive and expensive to hire great talent and keep them around. Grown their sales teams by 80% – 400%.

Sales Hiring 72

Sales Hiring Revenue Marketing Interviewing 72

SaaStr

APRIL 20, 2022

This famous quote from self-help author Robert Collier applies to every sales organization because excellent results come through repeatable activities, not one-off wins. The ratio of engaged vs. disengaged employees: 2:1 . Alice Katwan , SVP at Twilio , discusses how you can build a high-retention sales team while being remote.

Sales Hiring 229

Sales Hiring Scale Retention Sales 229

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2023

Jameson Yung, SVP of Sales at Gong, and Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund and previous CRO at Brex, share five tactical ways to get back to growing and hitting revenue targets. Create/ track a leaderboard so i f someone is below average in sales, it’s objective. If you look at the number of Sales vs. Marketing.

Sales Hiring 211

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Revenue Sales 211

SaaStr

MARCH 8, 2023

When the company started 20 years ago, it didn’t hire salespeople. So what should earlier-stage companies do: immediately build out a big sales team or focus on product-led growth? It wasn’t until 12 years in that they hired their first commission rep. Now they have sales reps, but still consider themselves PLG.

Sales Hiring 236

Sales Hiring Enterprise Headcount Scale 236

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 22, 2020

If you think sales is a simple job, I have a few hundred professional connections who would like a word with you. There’s a range of key skills that separate the best from the rest, and success belongs to companies who can identify and hire reps who have those precious skills. By mastering your sales interview questions.

Sales Hiring 76

Sales Hiring Interviewing Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting 76

CustomerSuccessBox

APRIL 27, 2022

Have your customer’s been engaging a lot with your business? That customer experience has a lot of impact on customer engagement. For that to happen, you must hire the best Customer Success Manager (CSM). Let’s figure out the best practices to hire a CSM! 7 best Practices to hire a Customer Success Manager (CSM).

Sales Hiring 52

Sales Hiring Customer Success Management Interviewing 52

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 19, 2022

SaaS businesses are discovering that customers choose and recommend them based not on flashy marketing or super fancy product features but on the experience of engaging with the company and the value it delivers. Ten years ago, customer success was described in relation to other functions like support or account management.

Sales Hiring 249

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scaling Construction 249

Neil Patel

OCTOBER 24, 2020

Hiring and working with a digital agency comes with a lot of considerations. When you are initially engaging with a digital agency, you should expect to receive some form of value upfront before you invest in their services. Test project – In some cases, it may be worth hiring the agency for a test project initially.

Outsourcing Services 115

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Engagement Scale 115

OpenView Labs

APRIL 14, 2021

While hiring all talent is tough, hiring executives can be particularly excruciating. And the specter of making the wrong decision looms large—one wrong hire is all it takes to poison a culture. He hires dozens of executives every year for OpenView portfolio companies like Expensify , Highspot , and Calendly.

Sales Hiring 55

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Technical Review Technical Advisors 55

SaaStr

APRIL 5, 2022

My partial list: Hiring “too low” to save money. Why not just hire a manager for $80k, who can work with whatever budget you assign? The problem here is that instead of hiring an accretive resource, you hire a cost center than can’t deliver sales/leads/upsells. Settling on a VP hire. But not before.

Scale 251

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Startup 251

SaaStr

APRIL 25, 2023

In last week’s Workshop Wednesday , President Sales & Field Engineering Chris Donato and SVP Business Development & Ecosystem Shelli Vivona shared how to scale out a go-to-market org. Hire and Train the Right Talent No one can dispute the importance of hiring the right talent. Finding that talent was critical.

Scale 198

Scale VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Engineering 198

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 29, 2018

Company raises money and is now ready to “scale the sales team.” Their current seller has done a great job, so the natural inclination is to assume that we want to replicate that person and sales will continue to grow, right? Fast forward 1 year later: “Oh no, my entire sales team looks the exact same…”. Sound familiar?

Sales Hiring 74

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 74

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 13, 2020

Second, you’ll force yourself to spend more time tracking and managing candidates. Hire external recruiters — and be very good to them. Hire an internal recruiter, too, as early as you can. At least as early as you are hiring more than 1 new employee a month. A written critique of your product for a product hire.

Sales Recruiting 363

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Interviewing Scale 363

OpenView Labs

FEBRUARY 10, 2020

From its bootstrapped founding in 2002 all the way to a $5 billion valuation in 2016, Atlassian famously had no sales people. ‘No No sales’ became nearly as synonymous with Atlassian as ‘no software’ was with Salesforce. Atlassian now has a sales team. Public PLG Businesses Are Doubling Down on Sales.

Sales Hiring 57

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Sales 57

Point Nine Land

OCTOBER 23, 2023

P9 Panel on Hiring Sales Leaders — Founders Summit 2023 “You are going to fire your first sales manager!” — A lesson too many founders learn the hard way. My favorite joke when I meet a brilliant founder is to ask them if they know there’s an easier path to becoming an Account Executive than founding a company.

Sales Hiring 125

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Advisors Technical Cofounder 125

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2023

This is a common mistake founders make — getting a new Head of X when you get to a certain point in business, missing a sales number, the product isn’t what you want, there’s too much churn, etc. Sometimes, that’s true and you have to look outside of the company for your next great hire. Your average sales quota is $1M.

Scale 251

Scale Sales Hiring SaaS Scaling 251

Valuize Consulting

JUNE 9, 2022

If you answered yes to any or all of the above questions, then you urgently need to hire a senior-level Customer Success Operations Leader. If you hire first-rate CS Ops leadership and fully empower them with proper funding and resources, they will help your organization increase CLV, decrease CRC, and reduce CEC.

Sales Hiring 52

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale Leadership 52

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2021

If you want to hire your first sales rep and close more deals, you need to understand how the sales process works, what tools your team needs to be successful and learn to speak sales. Sales definitions you should know. CRM objects — Represent the sales relationship you have with a specific person or company.

Sales Hiring 300

Sales Hiring Startup Sales Forecasting 300

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2024

Sales-assisted, product-led growth strategies that close Enterprise leads. For example, if someone in their TAM is hiring for a CX lead, this is a signal for Gorgias to help them figure out a CX motion since their product is a help desk for e-commerce. In this playbook we’ll share: Automated outbound at-scale strategies.

Scale 241

Scale Sales Hiring Strategy Marketing 241

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2023

Things don’t always get better by hiring someone new. It’s easier to swing and miss when hiring someone new vs. betting on the people you already have. The Lesson: Many times, Nick thought, “I should hire for the role I’ll need four years from now.” What does this mean for the company? That you get over your skis.

Sales Hiring 183

Sales Hiring Scale Pricing Customer Success 183

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 20, 2023

Bridging the Content Chasm Sales is increasingly using strategic content creation and distribution as part of the sales process – from outbound, to advancing pipeline along, to awareness and education on social platforms. With that responsibility, often there is a need to create content to assist with the sales education process.

Sales Hiring 105

Sales Hiring Marketing Sales Sales Enablement 105

SaaStr

APRIL 2, 2023

I walk them through this when I hire them. There are many stories of legendary exec hires. I hired the person with a great resume but who didn’t get our business, culture, or community. Lesson: Many times, I thought, “I need to hire for the role I’ll need 4 years from now.” Of course, sometimes that is indeed true.

Sales Hiring 278

Sales Hiring Scale Scaling Customer Success 278

SaaStr

MARCH 29, 2023

Obsess how you bring on talent Hiring processes are loose and inconsistent in even the biggest businesses. As a $20M business, you likely can’t afford an HR chief, making your hiring standards and disciplines even more important. Get conscious about who you are trying to hire and the process you want to take them through.

Sales Hiring 195

Sales Hiring Scale Strategy Metrics 195

OpenView Labs

MARCH 24, 2021

Without fail, every week I speak to 5–10 startup founders who are dealing with one of these two painful situations: They’re going through the process of parting ways with the wrong VP of Sales or the wrong enterprise salespeople. For either one, the bottom line is that the cost of a bad hire is significant.

Sales Hiring 56

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Company Culture Interviewing 56

SaaStr

OCTOBER 6, 2019

And often, if you are capital efficient, your marketing cost will be close to $0 at this point (you are barely spending anything to acquire most customers), and your sales costs are pretty predictable. Generally speaking, one Director of Sales can manage about 8 closers, account execs, max. Why would this be?

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Venture Capital 246

SaaStr

JANUARY 19, 2023

You also get access to our drag and drop, visual integration builder, allowing sales teams to directly create integrations for clients, or marketing teams to create actionable content that can easily be shared and installed. Greenhouse is the hiring software company. It’s the everywhere workforce, working together. With over $1.5B

Sales Hiring 229

Sales Hiring Scale Cloud Churn 229

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 13, 2017

In our last article, we did a tactical tear down of when to hire sales trainer or sales consultant. In this post, we’ll explain how to find and hire the right sales consultant or sales trainer for your business. What Do You Look For In A Sales Consultant or Trainer?

Sales Hiring 88

Sales Hiring Consulting Scale Sales 88

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2022

Consistent with my experience that Free pilots only work for a subset of buyers, and where the vendor is really, really good at managing them. Otherwise, there is no engagement. 41% of you have sales do some customer onboarding, not just CS or other specialists. . #4. Should sales just disappear once the contract is signed? #5.

Sales Hiring 303

Sales Hiring Pricing Scale Interviewing 303

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 16, 2021

Q: What are the common mistakes in B2B sales in the early-ish days? The list could be endless, and it can vary a lot based on type of customer, type of sale, etc. The list could be endless, and it can vary a lot based on type of customer, type of sale, etc. No prospect enjoys going through a sales process for fun.

Scale 202

Scale Sales Hiring Sales SaaS 202

SaaStr

JULY 13, 2022

First, you hire your sales team. Finally, growth occurs when sales, product, and marketing can come together. Mistake 2: Hiring with urgency. Founders often hire sales teams with urgency, even in a volatile market, resulting in hires who may not be successful salespeople for your organization.

Scale 236

Scale Sales Hiring Revenue Marketplace as a Service 236